Technical Papers and Presentations

Wettability affects two-phase displacements in porous media by determining the microscopic distribution of fluids in pore spaces. The impact of wettability on transport properties at macro-scales has been widely addressed in literature; however a deeper understanding of wettability effects demands pore-level investigations which are still limited.

In this paper, COMSOL Multiphysics® software was used to investigate micro-scale influence of contact angle on flow in porous medium. Cahn-Hilliard phase field equation was solved using finite element method with adaptive mesh refinement. Fluid distributions, saturations and displacement mechanisms are completely different for water wet and oil wet systems. As shown in Figure 1, different pore-scale mechanisms were observed in water wet and oil wet conditions which affected the efficiency of the displacements.